French Company Shows Viability of Biomass-based Ethanol with Bacterial Process

DEINOVE, a French technology company that designs and develops new industrial processes based on the utilization of Deinococcus bacteria, has produced ethanol from biomass at a titer of 9 percent, which is near the maximum theoretical yield.

Deinococcus is suited for industrial applications owing to its resilient characteristics and novel enzymatic and metabolic properties. The record yield posted by DEINOVE in a pre-industrial scale fermentation of biomass sugars with the use of this microbe exceeds the widely accepted threshold for second generation biofuel production process. Second generation biofuels are derived from non-food sources like farm and industrial waste.

DEINOVE demonstrated that the industrial production costs with its bacterial process for converting biomass to biofuel fall in line with market expectations. The process uses the Consolidated BioProcessing (CBP) which simultaneously employs hydrolysis (breakdown of cellulose from biomass) and fermentation (conversion of simple sugars into ethanol).